[EM] Clean Government Alliance

[Richard Fobes]

In this discussion about term limits, I forgot to mention an important 
U.S.-specific deal-breaker.

The United States Supreme Court ruled that (using the words in 
Wikipedia) "states cannot impose term limits upon their federal 
Representatives or Senators.

The details are here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_limits_in_the_United_States#Congress

This means that applying term limits to members of the United States 
Congress would require adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, as I understand it, adopting term limits for Congressmen is one of 
the goals of Clean Government Alliance.

Even at the federal level, banning single-mark ballots might be easier.

BTW, most of the states in the United States already have term limits 
for local and state-level positions.  I am not opposed to those; they 
serve a useful purpose while we continue to have unfair elections.  I am 
also not opposed to federal term limits.

Rather I'm saying that getting term limits adopted for Congressmen 
appears, to me, to be a harder goal than banning single-mark ballots, 
and term limits won't lead to as much reform as better ballots and 
better counting methods.

Why settle for using Duct Tape to patch up what isn't working, when 
solving the underlying problem is far more effective?

Of course, the Supreme Court might also regard a ban on single-mark 
ballots as unconstitutional.  But that would be great because that 
"publicity" for alternate ballot types would elevate the discussion of 
the topic to the point where it would become easy for individual states 
to adopt such a ban for elections of local and state-level positions, 
and that's where we are most likely to get early reforms.

Richard Fobes